Job Interviews

L.B., 1L

I’ve been doing a lot of job interviews lately. Just a few months ago, I was a little mystified by the 2Ls and 3Ls who were wearing suits around the Law School for job interviews during YLS’s Fall Interview Program. But now it’s spring, and those of us in the 1L class are beginning to understand how the job search works. Aside from the occasional conversation about why my law school transcript doesn’t have any useful information on it right now (only one of my grades from last semester has been reported so far, but I can proudly report that I passed!), going through these interviews has made me appreciate YLS more than ever.

Ignoring for a moment the law school rankings (which, in reality, really do matter for jobs), there’s a lot about Yale that has made the interviewing process a lot easier. I’m now in my second semester of working on a journal. My small group professor, who agreed to be a reference for me, knows me well enough to not only vouch for my ability to write a legal memo, but also to understand how I tend to approach questions of the law. And, since we’re able to pick our own classes in our second semester, I’ve been able to talk about the new classes that I’m taking, and why I find those interesting.

I was on a phone interview earlier this week with a government employer, and we went through the typical routine of a job interview. The two women interviewing me asked all of the usual questions about my activities at Yale, what my favorite class has been, and why I was interested in working in their office. Then one of the women asked me, “So do you like law school?” I emphatically answered, “I love it here.” She replied, laughing, “It’s always the Yale students that say that.”